Fish and Game Commission President Dan Richards poses with puma he killed legally in Idaho. • Photo courtesy of Flying B Ranch

What do you think?

Does it matter to you that Richards killed and ate the lion? Share your thoughts in the lively debate going on in the comments below.

Richards’ role is well known: In January, the 59-year-old Southern Californian went hunting in Idaho. He shot a mountain lion, gutted it right there in the snow, cooked up part of it and ate it.

He said it tasted like pork loin.

Photos from the kill show Richards hugging his heavy catch and grinning.

For all this, he’s been lambasted in some quarters and lionized in others.

Animal-rights groups, some elected officials and others found the scene galling, pointing out that Richards is, after all, president of the California Fish and Game Commission and is supposed to represent a state where voters have banned the hunting of mountain lions.

To critics, Richards was mocking the will of Californians — no matter that the hunt was legal in Idaho.

But for hunters and others who believe California has gone overboard regulating the environment and outdoor activities, Richards has taken on folk hero status. Cries of go, Dan, go have lit up websites in recent weeks, fueled by his unapologetic response to the flap.

“I fully appreciate that some people are opposed to all sporting. This is a way bigger deal than that,” he said in a telephone interview late last week. “This is about enviro-terrorists who are trying to take over a state agency. They attack. They’re attacking me …

“I find most of them disgusting.”

Such charged comments have colored the issue since it broke. At a recent meeting of the state commission, one woman stood up and dismissed hunters as “bloodthirsty Neanderthals.”

To observers, the rhetoric illustrates the divisions that have become part of the daily debate over issues like the environment and wildlife protection.

“It’s indicative of people being from two distinct communities that don’t really have any interaction with each other,” said John Evans, a UC San Diego sociologist who has studied polarization in public debate.

In San Diego County, the same dynamic has been part of the debate over the seals at La Jolla Children’s Pool, backcountry turkey hunts for youth and the recent protest over an Alpine facility that uses live pigs to help Navy corpsmen learn how to treat injuries on the battlefield.

‘Obstructionists’

Richards, an Ontario real estate broker, Republican and longtime outdoorsman, bristles at the idea that there’s a glaring divide. Calling himself a conservationist, he said he has worked with environmentalists who didn’t kowtow to what he sees as extremist views.